


like real people do

by IceImagines



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Comtesse!Widowmaker, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Halloween AU, Marriage Proposal, Mentions of Past Torture, UGH theyre SO IN LOVE, bride!sombra, god theyre fucked up but they love each other so much, its late i know, mild body horror, moira is mentioned like once, no smut??? actually no smut at all, some deliberate purple prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 22:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21465634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceImagines/pseuds/IceImagines
Summary: The vampire's castle isn't quite so empty these days.
Relationships: Sombra | Olivia Colomar/Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOw IM LIKE THREE WEEKS LATE I'M SORRY 
> 
> it's cute af i promise
> 
> title is (obviously) from the hozier song, in fact i recommend you listen to that or whatever else is your favorite hozier song while reading, he inspired this quite a bit. 
> 
> trigger warnings for mild body horror bc sombra's physique is kinda fucked up & some mentions of past traumatic events and torture
> 
> enjoy, and lmk what you think <3

The comtesse returns to the Château at the cusp of dawn, the first faint sun rays burning on her skin as the bones of her bat form shift and stretch. Fur and leathery wings vanish and leave a woman standing in the ancient manor's open courtyard. She wipes blood from her mouth with the back of a pale hand as she steps inside. The metallic taste of it is still there on her tongue. The hunt was fruitful tonight. 

She doesn't feel the chill of the air around her on her skin as she crosses the dark foyer and starts making her way up the central staircase, the wine colored rug soft under her bare feet. Her unnaturally keen nose picks up on the scents of the approaching fall outside, rotting leaves, damp soil, but they're overpowered by the flowers that are everywhere in these halls. They line the corridors in ornate vases that spent centuries collecting dust in the attic before the one who placed the flowers came. 

The comtesse's heart hasn't beat in two hundred years, but she knows if it still did, the pounding would be painful against her ribs right now, more and more the closer she gets to the door at the end of the hallway. 

The thrill of the hunt used to be incomparable. Now she longs for it to be over quicker, quicker, prays for the daylight to come swifter, so she can return here, to the flowers and the darkness and her. 

When she's almost there, a sound suddenly catches her ears, and she stiffens. 

Someone is crying softly at the other side of the door. 

Something cold settles in her chest. She gently pushes the door's handle down and opens it just enough to slip inside. 

The bedroom is only dimly lit, the heavy curtains already drawn shut. A fire burns in the hearth, though the comtesse can't feel its warmth. There are flowers here, too, but their scent can't quite cover the ever-so-slight smell of rot coming from the bed.

The comtesse's love is lying on her side, facing away from her. Sobs are shaking her small frame. The white of her nightgown is stark against the dark red sheets. The comtesse's dead heart aches at the view. 

She grabs her robe from the armchair she threw it over when she left and pulls it on, negligently tying the belt while she approaches the bed and sits down next to her beloved. With one slender hand she strokes a strand of dark hair back from the woman's forehead. 

"Sombra, mon cœur," she murmurs, "why are you weeping?" 

Sombra looks up at her, wiping at the few dark colored tears her body has allowed her to spill. "You're back late," she says, voice trembling. "I was getting worried." 

"Forgive me." The comtesse's thumb strokes her cheek gently. Sombra's dark eyes close for a moment. 

"It's alright. You're here now."

She is clutching her right hand to her chest with her left one. The comtesse lets her own fingers drift downwards and gently takes Sombra's wrist, lifting it slightly. 

Her skin's greenish gray color has shifted to black around the edges of where her hand is connected to her arm. The crude stitches are loose in several places, making the hand bend unnaturally, the fingers twitching slightly. 

"They broke a few hours ago," Sombra whispers. "I couldn't fix them. My other hand is too shaky." 

More of those black tears run down her cheeks. The comtesse gently wipes them away. "I will get the needle. Stay here, I will be right back." 

Sombra is sitting up in bed when she returns with the sewing materials. Wordlessly she holds her damaged hand out to the comtesse, who takes it in her own and rubs soothing circles into her wrist while she positions the needle. A thick black thread is already pulled through it. 

This is not the first time she has had to do this. But it never gets any easier to hear Sombra's pained whimpers as the needle pierces her skin, pulling the thread through after it, once, twice, seven times until the hand is secured in place once again. The comtesse cuts off the leftover thread with her fangs before tying it up and setting the sewing kit aside.

Sombra's hand drops. So does her head. Her shoulders are shaking again. 

The comtesse gathers her up in her arms and gently pulls her down onto the mattress with her. Sombra hides her face in her beloved's neck, hands fisted in the thin fabric of her robe, as she weeps, with pain, with grief for what she is. 

"It hurts," she sobs. The comtesse kisses her forehead with cold, bloodless lips. 

"I know, my love. It will get better soon." 

It does, after an immeasurably long time. Sombra's shaking subsides. Her pained sounds quieten down. Her breathing slows. 

She still breathes, unlike the comtesse. Neither of them is alive, but Sombra's existence is so much more fragile. So easily snuffed out. 

It hurts to think about it. More than anything has since the comtesse woke up in blood soaked bedsheets with her husband's corpse next to her all that time ago. She would kill Junkenstein again if she could. 

When it is over, they rise from bed together and wander the halls aimlessly, hands firmly clasped together, green against milky white. Sombra's hands are nearly as cold as the comtesse's own. Neither of them minds. 

It is dark this deep in belly of the castle, but the comtesse's inhumanly keen senses allow her to see everything she needs to. The paintings on the walls, pale features of dozens of men and women who lived here before her obscured with a layer of dust and grime that nobody has bothered to clean off. The spiderwebs in the ceiling corners. The woman walking beside her, the unnatural color of her skin, the long curve of her neck bisected by another set of stitches, the long dark hair that still grows on the top of her head but not on the sides where Junkenstein jammed needles and tubes into her over and over. Her face, still heart-stoppingly beautiful even in death. 

She started bringing the flowers inside soon after Junkenstein's death, when she told the comtesse what a beautiful garden she had and the comtesse responded that she would have to take her word for it, for she had not seen it in daylight in two hundred years. The rooms started filling up with them soon after, lilies, marigolds, moss roses, amaranths, a splash of color in the monochrome darkness of their home. The comtesse helped her retrieve and clean the vases from the attic. 

The flowers are beautiful, but she doesn't care for them as much as she does for the smile that lights up Sombra's face when she tells her she likes them. 

Sombra is as dead as she is, but her presence has filled the Château with so much life. It's hard to comprehend sometimes how the comtesse was ever able to stand it without her, even though the year they have been together seems like such a small timespan compared to the centuries the comtesse has seen. 

She hardly remembers the time when she was alive, now. She used to spend hours or days at a time dwelling on it, mourning what she used to be, staring up at the painting of Gérard like it would bring him back, like it would take the taste of his blood in her mouth away that always stays no matter how many humans she drains. 

When she slept, the rare times she needed to, she would dream of him. Of that night. The face of the woman that turned her into this, whose name she doesn't even know but nevertheless has cursed every waking moment since. One of her eyes was red, the comtesse recalls, red as her hair, short and further emphasizing the hollowness of her cheeks, the deathly pale color of her skin that the comtesse recognizes now every time she looks down at her hands. 

The dreams have not returned since Sombra came here. Like her weight in her arms every night keeps them away. She doesn't need to sleep, unlike the comtesse, but she doesn't mind just lying there for hours, stroking her endless black hair. 

The comtesse never finds the words to tell her how she adores her. She settles for gentle kisses to soft, cold lips, arms wrapped around her waist. A sniff of a blooming rose. 

She used to miss what she once was, but she doesn't anymore. Never would she trade a heartbeat and deep breaths and the sunlight for this. For her. 

Sombra spends much of her time in the Château's extensive library. When the comtesse asks her what she is looking for, she never quite has an answer for her. But she spends hours on the carpeted floor in front of the fireplace, bent over books upon books, frowning and trying to decipher what is written in them in the messy handwriting of long dead scientists. The comtesse has taken to keeping her company, reclining on the settee behind her, watching the flames dancing in the fireplace and the way Sombra's hair shimmers in the light. Sometimes she helps her translate something or offers commentary. But mostly she just watches. She has become very good at that over time, though she has never had anything as lovely to watch. 

There is a pattern in the books Sombra is interested in. They speak of artificial life. Of machines that can think and feel like men. Of arcane rituals that bring the dead back to life. 

The comtesse knows that Sombra's memories of what came before are patchy, hazy. She only remembers bits and pieces, and they don't feel like they belong to her. She isn't afraid of snakes like she used to be, of fire, of the dark. 

Sombra fears almost nothing, but she does fear the black decay that spreads from the pieces where her parts are sown together whenever a thread rips. She fears death almost as much as she is already intimately familiar with it. 

Neither she nor the comtesse know exactly how Junkenstein managed to shock the life back into her, made largely from the corpse of one woman but added to here and there with pieces of others, a finger that is too large, a discolored patch of skin over her ribs. The comtesse let him stay in her Château back then for no other reason than that she was bored. Two hundred years can grow dreadfully long. The scientist's maniacal laughter hurt her sensitive ears, but at least it was something other than the sound of the wind whistling through the hallways of the castle, the leaves rustling outside, the glaring absence of animal noises that are driven away by the stench of death that hangs over the building like fog. 

The comtesse didn't care particularly what he was doing in the rooms in the catacombs she'd given him permission to use until one day the air was pierced by a woman's screams. 

If she lived for another thousand years she would surely never forget that first time she laid eyes on Sombra. The tattered white wedding dress she was in, tied to a large stone slab surrounded by Junkenstein's devices, her body wracked by spasms as she screamed in pain, black tears running down her cheeks. 

The comtesse didn't kill Junkenstein right away, throwing him into one of the cells where he could keep the skeletons company instead. She untied Sombra from the stone slab, caught her when her legs gave out underneath her and carried her to her own bedroom, where she slept for nearly three days while the comtesse got Junkenstein to explain to her what he had done after she'd removed all but two of his fingers. Then she tore his throat out. 

His blood tasted disgusting, but it allowed her to stay at the Château for a few more days without needing to hunt, about as long as it took Sombra to regain her ability to speak and what little memories she had left.

She couldn't recall her name. After a few weeks, she decided to call herself Sombra after suddenly waking up one morning perfectly fluent in Spanish. She thought it was fitting. 

The comtesse would have cut out the dead thing that was her heart from her chest and presented it to her on a platter had she asked her to. It had taken Sombra next to no time to take her over entirely, make her hers without even meaning to when she smiled her crooked smile or ran her fingers through the comtesse's long black hair or wiped the blood from her mouth after a successful hunt. 

The first time she kissed her felt like she was breathing for the first time in two hundred years. 

The comtesse watches Sombra pour over her books, the crinkle of her nose as she frowns, the way her eyes widen a tiny bit as she reads something that catches her attention, how she absentmindedly tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, bisected by stitches. 

A thought comes to her. 

The comtesse contemplates it only for a moment before she slides off the settee and lowers herself onto the plush carpet behind her beloved. Her pale arms, exposed by the rolled up sleeves of her ruffled shirt, come to encircle Sombra's waist as she rests her head on her shoulder from behind. 

"Mon amour," she murmurs, pressing a kiss to the side of Sombra's neck. Sombra doesn't look up, but she hears the smile in her voice. 

"You hungry?" She turns a page. "I'm afraid I won't be of much use when it comes to that." 

She feels guilty because the comtesse can't drink from her. It's silly, and endearing. The comtesse only loves her more for it. 

"No." Another kiss. 

Sombra turns her head a little. "Something wrong?" 

"I have a... request." 

She isn't nervous, though she's never done this before. There is no reason to be. 

"Anything."

The comtesse breathes in Sombra's scent. Her arms tighten around her waist. 

"Marry me." 

Sombra freezes in her embrace for an instant. 

"I..." She seems at a loss for words. "Why? There's no point to it. We're dead, amor. Nobody... nobody could even officiate for us." 

The comtesse presses her cheek to Sombra's shoulder. "I don't care. I want you to be my wife."

Sombra turns around in her arms to face her. She's smiling, though she still looks somewhat puzzled. 

"Mi cielo, there's nothing I'd love more, I just don't understand how we're going to-" 

"You think too much." The comtesse takes her face between her hands. "We don't need anyone else. The laws of that world out there, why should they matter?" 

She leans in and kisses Sombra softly. 

"Marry me," she whispers against her lips. "I am doomed to live to see eternity. I do not want any of it without you by my side." 

"And if I fall apart?"

"I will put you back together." 

Sombra's hands come up to tangle in the comtesse's hair as she kisses her again, deeply, slowly. Her breath is cool against the comtesse's skin. The comtesse's thumb catches against the thick line of stitches on her cheek as she caresses it gently. 

"Yes." 

It's swallowed up by their kiss. But she feels it. Deep down where even the rot in her soul can never reach. 

She doesn't miss the warmth of the sun on her face. Doesn't miss the beating of her heart. 

None of it could ever replace this.

**Author's Note:**

> bruh i just noticed theres no cursive in this this has never happened before


End file.
